Still sort of meh this weekend. I’ve got two good aria intros, but nothing’s shaking loose on them. Have messed around a bit, and I’d like to work on “Confusa si miri,” but I can’t get it in gear. It’s in 3/8, and I’d love to move it into 3/4 and then split everything into 16th notes. That’ll give me 12 notes per measure, and then I can play with hemiolas, which are always good fun.

But … it’s not coming. I cannot think in 4-beat notes naturally. My brain insists on feeling triplets when I have to fan a beat out into multiple notes.

Maybe I can put it into 5/4 or something. I haven’t done that yet, an oddball time signature. I don’t know. I’m just in a bit of a turnout at the moment.

I was listening to the G Major prelude from book 1 of the WTC and thought it was a cute thing to play with, but then realized that I’d already done it with “Con raucio mormorio,” the last variation. *sigh* I’ll keep chewing on it.

Done the transcription of “Confusa si miri.” A fun one. Now, to listen to a bunch of Bach and Buxtehude preludes and see what rattles loose.

Here‘s what I’m working with — not the recitatif, just the intro which starts 27 seconds in. It’s so dramatic and fantastic, and heavy sounding. I’ll probably someday want to go back and do something with it again.

In other words, here. All those crunchy preludes … This one looks like really fertile ground.

Update: You know what I should do — I should listen to all the preludes in the WTC. I like them better than the fugues anyhow, although that probably verges on heresy coming from a lover of classical music. I think there’s a part of me that never forgave him for putting them in the wrong order, although that might not have been him; I’m not enough of a Bach specialist to know. But if it had been me, I’d have put them in order of key signature, not tonic, and have advanced in order of the circle of fifths. C Major, then A minor, then G Major, then E minor, etc. This C Major, then C minor, followed by the D’s nonsense just drives me nuts.

I have the Zhu Xiao Mei CDs and like them well enough; I really should just reorder the stupid things in iTunes and listen in their proper order, that which is ordained in Nature and cozy for the universe, as opposed to this heathen way that causes the edges of the universe to creak and my eyelid to twitch.